Rosemary and Yarrow
by KrisEleven
Summary: A collection of unrelated one-shots focused on the relationship and scenes between Gaius and Merlin. Chapter 1: Posing the Question, in which Gaius meets Hunith's son and has to ask himself what he should do with the boy who has enough power to either save Camelot, or destroy it. A lot - too much, he thinks - is resting on the decision of one old man.


A/N Just a note that all my stories draw from the full four seasons of the show. Though this takes place in episode one of season one, it has mentions of things that are only revealed later on. Thanks for reading!

* * *

Gaius waited until Merlin was unpacking his bag in his new room above Gaius' chambers before he sat and opened Hunith's letter. He noted, with clinical precision, the after-effects of his fright in his weak knees and the tremor in his fingers as he unfolded the pages Hunith had sent to him with her child.

There had been no moment, as he fell, that Gaius realized the consequences of what was happening. It was not until he had hit the cot at the bottom that the knowledge of what would have happened to his old body had he hit the ground from that height came to his mind at all. Perhaps that was why he had reacted so with the boy who stood in his rooms, unannounced and in possession of more magic than Gaius had seen in one person in years. The fear had hit him, by then, and his hands had very nearly shaken with it.

As he smoothed the letter flat on the table, Gaius looked up at the bed the boy had moved to save him. They had dragged it back into its usual position, but Gaius would have to try to fix it, to avoid and unnecessary questions. Thinking about what had nearly been – and what had been done – he had to repress a shiver. Gaius wouldn't admit it, but Hunith's son had frightened him, even as he had saved him.

He read the letter, learning of the life Hunith had been leading since they had fallen out of contact, years ago. He remembered her as a young, beautiful girl; courageous and steady, but naive as most young people were. Seeing her son, almost a man, he knew she couldn't be the same child he remembered, even though the years didn't touch his memory of her the way time must have done so. Reading her words, and the weight of her concerns, introduced him to a mature woman who had taken the hardships of life and accepted them with grace and strength. But no mother could see her child in danger and not worry for them.

"I_t is every mother's fate to think her child special, and yet I would give my life that Merlin were not so."_

Gaius lowered his head, looking away from Hunith's letter. Her love for her son touched Gaius. Her fears for him – and what they could mean for Merlin, Hunith, and himself – hit him hard. She was right to be afraid. Even outside of Uther's kingdom, they had not been outside the king's reach; bounty hunters brought magic practitioners from farther than Ealdor in cages and chains for Uther's coin. Hunith had already lost a loved one to Camelot and did not want to lose another. And the boy was anything _but_ inconspicuous.

Gaius knew too well how it would all end, if Uther found that the boy had magic. He remembered every one of them, all those sent to the fire and the hangman and the axe. It was a litany of names and faces and loss he couldn't get out of his head. Instead of getting better as the years passed and the Purge faded behind them, it grew worse. Those left with magic were caught in a corner and the damage to them from their own anger and hatred and pain was far greater than any of the horrific things Uther had done in his war against them. Those left alive were one of two things: they were the meek, subtle and careful; or they were the powerful, the ones who survived because they were nigh impossible to kill and whose anger at all they had lost made them implacable enemies with glares directed at Camelot and its King. They had the power between them to destroy Camelot, and Gaius had been waiting for a decade for the fruits of Uther's actions to return to haunt them all.

* * *

"Your mother asked me to look after you," Gaius said, later. It was a bold idea, to send the boy into the heart of the Kingdom that would gladly kill him, but Hunith had never been a coward. _If_ the boy could keep his magic a secret, he would be as safe in Camelot itself as anywhere outside the city's walls, because nowhere else _was _safe, and at least those in the castle were too familiar to be looked at with constant suspicion.

"Yes."

"What did your mother say about your gifts?" Speaking to Merlin was like a lesson in secret-keeping. Hunith had made it clear that the boy knew nothing of his father, and that she wanted to keep it that way. Gaius searched for something of Balinor in the boy's stance or eyes or voice and found nothing.

"That I was special," Merlin answered, making Gaius smile. It was an understatement and a truth, and it sounded like Hunith.

"You _are_ special," he said warmly. "The likes of which I have never seen before."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, magic requires incantations, spells; it takes years of study. What I saw you do was elemental, instinctive." Impossible. The less power one had, the more specific their wording, runes, and tools must be. Gaius trailed one word of power after another to accomplish half of what Merlin did with thought alone. It should not have been possible.

"You are a question that has never been posed before," Gaius told the boy. He smiled at him, but wondered. There was more than one question to think over.

* * *

And then Merlin fought with the Prince, of all people, and used magic to do it. Gaius nearly collapsed when the news was brought to him that his new apprentice was being kept in the dungeons. Only after the message didn't include magic did Gaius find the strength to take a shaky breath. With the messenger sent away, Gaius allowed himself to sink into a chair and close his eyes. So close. So close to failing Hunith and seeing her son sentenced to death.

Did the boy not _think_? Did he not realise that he would be _killed_ if Uther found out what he was? Gaius's king would show no leniency for a child. He would not believe that Merlin had not chosen this path to walk. Uther had been salving his guilt over Ygraine's death through his hatred of magic and the pursuit of those who practiced it for longer than Merlin had been alive. The king would not see Merlin as anything but an enemy if ever he knew.

But what frightened Gaius most was the question of what would happen then. Because he had seen the raw power Merlin held and he wasn't sure, if the boy was pushed to the wall and forced to fight, if even Camelot's knights could hold him.

* * *

"Magic must be studied, mastered, and used for good, not for idiotic pranks!" he yelled at the boy when they were finally alone and safe.

"What is there to master?" Merlin asked. "I could move objects like that before I could talk!"

"Then by now you should know how to control yourself."

"I don't want to!" Merlin yelled back, and Gaius snapped his gaze to meet the boy's angry one. Only there, with the boy furious with the injustice of the world, did Gaius finally see Balinor in him. "If I can't use magic, then what have I got? I'm just a nobody. And I always will be." As he swept up the stairs and closed the door to his bedroom loudly, Gaius sighed and closed his eyes. It was an argument Gaius had heard used by many who could not give up magic, not even in the face of Uther's war. They were, with very few exceptions, either dead or enemies of Camelot.

Gaius wondered how he could possibly keep Merlin from both fates. Because one would break Hunith's – and his own – heart.

And the other might very well spell the doom of Camelot itself.

Gaius collected medicine and went to Merlin to ease the pain of a battle lost. The boy sat on his bed, staring at the floor, the shadows the day had left visible in his eyes. Merlin was childish in many ways, for someone with so much power, and Gaius's heart broke as he witnessed him learning his first hard lesson about the way of the world.

"You don't know why I was born like this, do you?"He asked as Gaius treated the bruises on his back. It was clear that Merlin had thought Gaius would, and was disappointed.

"No."

"I'm not a monster, am I?" It was spoken with a half-laugh, as if it wasn't a thought that had been lurking in Merlin's head all along, haunting him.

Gaius stopped cleaning his shoulder and leant forward, waiting for Merlin to make eye contact before he spoke, emphasizing every word: "Don't ever think that,"he said, looking into the boy's eyes and trying to make him _believe_ him.

Because _thinking_ that would _create_ that, and the path from fear and anger to hatred and the evil it brought was a slippery one.

Gaius should know; he had been there to watch Uther walk it.

* * *

Sitting in the dark after the boy had gone to sleep, a single burning candle illuminating Hunith's letter, the physician thought about Merlin and the questions he had brought to Gaius's mind.

Merlin did not fully understand the extent of his own power. Gaius didn't think he could name more than a dozen practitioners left alive that the boy _couldn't_ match, and that dozen had sacrificed _everything_ for access to the kind of power this child could use without even consciously deciding to do so. Merlin's lack of understanding of exactly how powerful he was helped him fit into the world and move through it as if he _was_ just a normal boy. For that Gaius could only be grateful.

But then Gaius, confronting him over his fight with the Prince, saw the anger the boy carried within him. Anger at the world for forcing him to be a shadow, anger at Arthur for beating him at a fight he knew he could win, anger at the king for frightening him into hiding what he was. Merlin could grow to hate Uther Pendragon for the war on magic. Indeed, he would have to be a soul of the purest kind _not_ to. The king had taken _everything_ from this child – more than Merlin even realized – and hung an executioner's axe over his head at the same time. Every moment of his life, Merlin had lived with the knowledge that he could be hunted down and killed for something he had been born with, for doing something as natural to him as breathing. Gaius had thought Merlin was unaware of the consequences of his magic, because of how he carelessly used it. He had been wrong; Merlin was not being thoughtless in his use of magic. He was being defiant.

Gaius knew this old tale, had seen it played through so many times it was written on his heart. The fear turned into anger, and as the losses and sacrifices multiplied, it would coalesce into hatred. Gaius had seen others walk this path too many times before, had seen them turn to the dark arts and create fear and pile others' losses onto their own until the world was engulfed in the flames of the pyres and one didn't know if the world was burning – was screaming – with their side, or yours.

And Merlin was capable of more than any of them. If he hated Uther, _truly_ hated him, he would destroy more than some buildings, more than some families, more than the king. All of Camelot would burn before him, and Gaius was not sure he could be stopped. The boy, if _he_ became an enemy of Uther's, would destroy not only Camelot's king, but them all. Merlin had the power for it, and the gods help them all, he had the anger. Could Gaius turn Hunith and Balinor's son from the path he seemed determined to walk?

Should he risk trying? He had given others up when the danger had seemed too great. He closed his eyes and held Hunith's letter tightly. He had to make a choice. What was Merlin going to become?

Gaius could choose one of two paths. He could refuse him, stunt him, stop the danger before it began. He would not harm Merlin, but he could send him away, ban him from developing his talents further, prevent him from ever becoming a threat.

Or, he could allow the boy to become what he could become, and hope that it was the best of him... not the worst.

It was an awfully large decision to ride on the shoulders of one old man.

It was an awful lot to trust in the hands of one young boy.

But Merlin had saved Gaius's life, without thought. He had stepped up and defended those weaker than himself. He was Balinor and Hunith's _son_, and you couldn't _not_ see the boy's goodness.

If Gaius would bet Camelot on one thing, it would be this boy's heart. He had seen it the moment they met. Uther's hatred may have infected the others, but Gaius did not believe that it would touch Merlin.

So, Gaius chose. And discovered it hadn't really been a choice at all.

* * *

"_Seems you're a hero."_

"_Hard to believe, isn't it?"_

"_I knew it from the moment I met you. You saved my life, remember."_


End file.
